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THE ADVENTURES OF PEREGRINE PICKLE
THE ADVENTURES OF PEREGRINE PICKLE TOBIAS SMOLLETT VOLUME I.
CHAPTER I.
An Account of Mr. Gamaliel Pickle--The Disposition of his Sister
described--He yields to her Solicitations and returns to the
Country.
In a certain county of England bounded on one side by the sea
and at the distance of one hundred miles from the metropolis lived
Gamaliel Pickle esq.; the father of that hero whose fortunes we
propose to record. He was the son of a merchant in London who
like Rome from small beginnings had raised himself to the highest
honours of the city and acquired a plentiful fortune though to
his infinite regret he died before it amounted to a plum conjuring
his son as he respected the last injunction of a parent to imitate
his industry and adhere to his maxims until he should have made
up the deficiency which was a sum considerably less than fifteen
thousand pounds.
This pathetic remonstrance had the desired effect upon his
representative who spared no pains to fulfil the request of the
deceased: but exerted all the capacity with which nature had endowed
him in a series of efforts which however did not succeed; for
by the time he bad been fifteen years in trade he found himself five
thousand pounds worse than he was when he first took possession of
his father's effects; a circumstance that affected him so nearly
as to detach his inclinations from business and induce him to retire
from the world to some place where he might at leisure deplore his
misfortunes and by frugality secure himself from want and the
apprehensions of a jail with which his imagination was incessantly
haunted. He was often heard to express his fears of coming upon
the parish; and to bless God that on account of his having been
so long a housekeeper he was entitled to that provision. In short
his talents were not naturally active and there was a sort of
inconsistency in his character; for with all the desire of amassing
which any citizen could possibly entertain he was encumbered
by a certain indolence and sluggishness that prevailed over every
interested consideration and even hindered him from profiting by
that singleness of apprehension and moderation of appetites which
have so frequently conduced to the acquisition of immense fortunes;
qualities which he possessed in a very remarkable degree. Nature
in all probability had mixed little or nothing inflammable in
his composition; or whatever seeds of excess she might have sown
within him were effectually stifled and destroyed by the austerity
of his education.
The sallies of his youth far from being inordinate or criminal never
exceeded the bounds of that decent jollity which an extraordinary
pot on extraordinary occasions may be supposed to have produced
in a club of sedate book-keepers whose imaginations were neither
very warm nor luxuriant. Little subject to refined sensations he
was scarce ever disturbed with violent emotions of any kind. The
passion of love never interrupted his tranquility; and if as Mr.
Creech says after Horace
Not to admire is all the art I know;
To make men happy and to keep them so;
Mr. Pickle was undoubtedly possessed of that invaluable secret;
at least he was never known to betray the faintest symptom of
transport except one evening at the club where he observed with
some demonstrations of vivacity that he had dined upon a delicate
loin of veal.
Notwithstanding this appearance of phlegm he could not help feeling
his disappointments in trade; and upon the failure of a certain
underwriter by which he lost five hundred pounds declared his
design of relinquishing business and retiring to the country. In
this resolution he was comforted and encouraged by his only sister
Mrs. Grizzle who had managed his family since the death of his
father and was now in the thirtieth year of her maidenhood with
a fortune of five thousand pounds and a large stock of economy
and devotion.
These qualifications one would think might have been the means
of abridging the term of her celibacy as she never expressed any
aversion to wedlock; but it seems she was too delicate in her
choice to find a mate to her inclination in the city: for I cannot
suppose that she remained so long unsolicited; though the charms of
her person were not altogether enchanting nor her manner over and
above agreeable. Exclusive of a very wan (not to call it sallow)
complexion which perhaps was the effects of her virginity
and mortification she had a cast in her eyes that was not at all
engaging; and such an extent of mouth as no art or affectation
could contract into any proportionable dimension; then her piety
was rather peevish than resigned and did not in the least diminish
a certain stateliness in her demeanour and conversation that
delighted in communicating the importance and honour of her family
which by the bye was not to be traced two generations back by
all the power of heraldry or tradition.
She seemed to have renounced all the ideas she had acquired
before her father served the office of sheriff; and the eye which
regulated the dates of all her observation was the mayoralty of
her papa. Nay so solicitous was this good lady for the support
and propagation of the family name that suppressing every selfish
motive she actually prevailed upon her brother to combat with
his own disposition and even surmount it so far as to declare a
passion for the person whom he afterwards wedded as we shall see
in the sequel. Indeed she was the spur that instigated him in all
his extraordinary undertakings; and I question whether be would or
not have been able to disengage himself from that course of life in
which he had so long mechanically moved unless he had been roused
and actuated by her incessant exhortations. London she observed
was a receptacle of iniquity where an honest unsuspecting man
was every day in danger of falling a sacrifice to craft; where
innocence was exposed to continual temptations and virtue eternally
persecuted by malice and slander; where everything was ruled by
caprice and corruption and merit utterly discouraged and despised.
This last imputation she pronounced with such emphasis and chagrin
as plainly denoted how far she considered herself as an example
of what she advanced; and really the charge was justified by the
constructions that were put upon her retreat by her female friends
who far from imputing it to the laudable motives that induced her
insinuated in sarcastic commendations that she had good reason
to be dissatisfied with a place where she had been so overlooked;
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